SpaceX shares surged on their first day of trading Friday, with the stock climbing as much as 30% in midday trading to around $175.50 a share, pushing the company’s market valuation to roughly $2.3 trillion.
The stock opened at $150 US, about 11% above its $135 IPO price, though that was still below the $175 level that had been floated in early indications of interest to trading desks. The IPO officially makes Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, and is expected to create thousands of new millionaires and multiple new billionaires among SpaceX employees and executives who held equity in the company.
Driven by his 42% stake in the rocket company alongside roughly $280 billion in core Tesla holdings, Musk’s total net worth surged between $1.0 trillion and $1.18 trillion to make him the world’s first trillionaire on paper. However, because less than 0.1% of his wealth is held in liquid cash, this historic milestone remains heavily tied to fluctuating equity markets and could easily slip back down if a major tech correction occurs.
Retail investors were eager to get in, with SpaceX ranking as one of the most-bought stocks on net as trading opened. It was also one of the most talked-about tickers on Reddit’s WallStreetBets in the days leading up to the debut. That said, SpaceX allocated a smaller-than-expected slice of the IPO to retail investors, which left some scrambling to buy shares on the open market.
SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell told CNBC she “wasn’t sure we would go public,” but said the current moment “actually feels like the right time.”
The debut is also expected to set off a broader wave of high-profile tech IPOs, with both Anthropic and OpenAI having recently filed confidential prospectuses with regulators.
There are some Canadians benefiting from the SpaceX IPO. The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) invested $220 million US into an early funding round of SpaceX back in 2019, just as Starlink was beginning. That bet is now worth over $11 billion US. Now, there’s a neat bit of irony here. Last year, Premier Doug Ford cancelled a $100 million Starlink contract in retaliation for U.S. tariffs, quietly hiding the cancellation fee from taxpayers. Now, 346,000 active and retired Ontario teachers are set to cash in big from SpaceX.
As of writing, SpaceX shares are trading at $172 USD on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. If you’re in Canada, CIBC launched a SpaceX Canadian Depositary Receipt on the Toronto Stock Exchange earlier this week under the ticker SPCX.TO, which lets you buy in Canadian dollars directly through the TSX.
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